Teaching Hate in Gaza

Arab children are still being taught to hate and destroy Israel.

Jews don’t exist. The Western Wall is Islamic property. The Torah and Talmud are fabricated.

These are not the ravings from a lunatic; as of this year, they’re “facts” taken from new textbooks in use throughout Gaza.

Hamas, which administers most of Gaza’s schools, has made a few changes in the way the schools are run. Modesty patrols now monitor college campuses. Gaza high school students can take military training as an elective. And contact between any school in Gaza and one in Israel is now a criminal offense.

The New York Times reported on November 4, 2013 some of Hamas’ educational initiatives. The new curriculum is Hamas’ latest salvo in the cultural war it’s waging in Gaza. History is being rewritten – the new textbooks don’t mention key recent events like the Oslo Accords – and take demonization of Israel and Jews to new lows.

The goal, according to one Hamas educational advisor, is to prepare children to “resist” Israel. (Jerusalem Post, 5/22/13)

Israel, they learn, is a racist country, and wants to drive all Arabs out of Iraq, Syria and Turkey. (Turkey is not an Arab country, but that didn’t seem to deter Hamas educational officials.) Hamas’ history is also rewritten: it emerges as a heroic resistance movement. Even current history is being rewritten: kids are learning (erroneously) that as recently as last year, Hamas rockets launched from Gaza hit Tel Aviv, and “forced the Zionists to beg for cease-fire.”

These are hardly the statements of a progressive, peace-seeking movement.

Yet, incredibly, Hamas continues to enjoy funding donated from an array of foreign governments and charities. In 2012, the European Union confirmed that it would continue funding the Palestinian Authority as usual, despite its new pact with Hamas, an EU-designated terrorist group. In lifting its six-year-old ban on funding Hamas, the EU expressed its expectation that the new joint government would be commitment to non-violence. Hamas is now allowed to share in EU funding directed to the Palestinian Authority, an amount that exceeds 50 million Euros each year.

Hamas’ latest textbook is only the latest in a series of biased educational curricula adopted by Palestinian leadership and supported by western governments.

A 2013 study by Yale University found that textbooks used in Palestinian Authority-run schools contained less information about Israelis than Israeli state textbooks contained about Palestinians. They portrayed Israelis negatively, and were less self-critical than Israeli state textbooks. (Israeli state textbooks, by contrast, were found to be more informative and positive about Palestinians, and more likely to contain self-critical information.) According to the Yale researchers, fully 84% of the material in the Palestinian Authority textbooks dealing with Israel was negative.

Examples of troubling material in Palestinian Authority educational material abound. Maps without Israel on them are common. And while student are taught to envisage a world without Israel, Israel’s creation is described – in one 12th grade textbook – as a “catastrophe that is unprecedented in history.”

Some Palestinian Authority texts glorify violence and death. An 8th grade reading book, in use since 2006, contains an ode to “heroes”: “Your enemies seek life, while you seek death”, while a 6th grade Arabic textbook asks students to read a poem The Martyr: “I shall carry my soul in my palm and toss it into the abyss of destruction….” (Texts translated by Palestinian Media Watch).

The 2011 matriculation exam for Palestinian Authority-run high schools asked students to punctuate phrases such as “we shall die in order that our land shall live” and “do not view the occupier as human” (reported in Ramallah-based newspaper AlAyyam May 3, 2011).

A third major organization running Palestinian schools is the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA). The UN defines aiding development as “enlarging people’s choices” and “expanding human capabilities”. You’d think that schools run by its agency would promote moderation but, sadly, this is not always the case.

There have been several instances of high-profile Hamas officials and even fighters working in UN schools. In 2008, a deputy headmaster and science teacher at the UNRWA-run Rafah Boys Prep School in Gaza was killed in an Israeli airstrike. It turned out this UN employee had also worked as a rocket engineer for the extremist group Islamic Jihad for eight years. After his death, Islamic Jihad hung a poster celebrating his martyrdom at the entrance of the UN school where he worked. (Jerusalem Post 8/21/11)

In 2009, according to the Jerusalem Post, the teachers union at UNRWA schools voted to pass control of their school curricula in Gaza to the ruling Hamas regime.

Despite this, Western governments have continued to bankroll UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority. International donors pledged $7.4 billion in aid over two years to the Palestinian Authority at a major conference in 2007, exceeding previous years’ support. In 2013, the Palestinian Authority approved an annual operating budget of $3.8 billion. The United States and European Union donate much of the UNRWA’s billion-dollar annual operating budget.

The United States, European Union, and others have a real interest in encouraging peace in the Middle East. In announcing that it would fund the new Palestinian Authority-Hamas government, the EU declared that it looked “forward to continuing its support, including through direct financial assistance, for a new Palestinian government that should uphold the principal of non-violence.”

Yet Hamas’ new textbooks – and other Palestinian books and schools that encourage hostility and celebrate bloodshed – are anything but non-violent.

Hamas’ new textbooks betray the very students they educate. Instead of giving Gaza’s children the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century, they are re-writing the history of the past. Instead of helping the region’s children understand the world around them, they are cruelly limiting their capacity to change that world for the better.

In 2010, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, responded to similar criticisms that Palestinian textbooks were biased and incited violence: “We are grateful for European aid, and without aid from the US and Europe there would be no chance of peace, but since the Oslo agreements were signed, the Palestinians have received more aid per capita than the people of Europe in the Marshall Plan after the Second World War and they have nothing to show for it. The money has either gone to terror or just isn’t there.”

Hamas’ latest textbook makes a future of violence and confrontation more likely. Concerned individuals and nations should be seeking ways to provide constructive alternates.

Featured at Aish.com:

About the Author

Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world.

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 10

(10)
Anonymous,
December 9, 2013 6:48 PM

Here's an idea of what to do, besides getting funding cut.

How about dropping leaflets as was done in WWII. Drop leaflets telling truth about Israel & history. How about (on those leaflets), have a list of positive web sites (assuming they have internet access). Positive leaflets about Israel, accurate about history, tells of Jew's contributions to the world, tells of what Jewish values actually are, maybe tells them accurate versions of their own religions (something to counter the verbal lies they are told about their own religion). Or if not dropping leaflets, somehow getting the communication to the people, to the children.

(9)
Albert Hache,
November 12, 2013 4:25 AM

Drinking their own poison

Anybody who nourishes hatred in his heart is only working at his own destruction. Palestinians blame Israel for all their ills and sufferings not ever noticing that they are, like everyone who suffers, the cause of their own suffering. Let them drink their own poison if they will, while we shall love our neighbors as ourselves and live with peace in our hearts. What did Golda Meir say ? " Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." To teach hatred to children is a terrible sin.

(8)
Mark Goldberg,
November 12, 2013 3:35 AM

gorilla in the room

It's not the gazans teaching hate. It's not the arabs teaching hate.It's Islam.... that's the source and it's endemic, the theologic imperative mandate and it's not some extremists in Islam... Its Islam period. And that is what drives all of this, and the denial we engage 900 lb gorilla in the room...of hate and self deception.

(7)
Anonymous,
November 11, 2013 3:38 AM

Baseless hatred of Jews is a fact of life

Esav soneh et Yaakov. It's a biblical invariant that extends to not only the Christian (Esav) world but the arab world.

It is irrational, defying all logic. The amount of good Israel has contributed to the world is as Mark Twain put it, Israel's "commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk".

We are a small fraction of a percent of the world, yet our Nobel price winners are staggering, our economy is among the top in the world, and our contributions to technology, science, medicine, have made a huge difference to the world.

These numbers are amplified when compared to the corresponding proportions in the arab world. Their greatest contribution to society has been the bomb belt.

So will the world continue to hate us? Yes. Is there anything we can do about it? No. Just keep praying and keep learning and keep pumping out greatness.

(6)
Anonymous,
November 11, 2013 12:45 AM

If only the world paid attention

If only our media cared to report reality instead of superficial fluff, we'd all be better off.

(5)
Stan Corbett,
November 10, 2013 10:38 PM

Two Palesinian Governments

There are two Palestinian entities. One is in Gaza and one is in The West Bank. The government in the U.S. foolishly thinks that if Israel negotiates with the West Bank rulers then there will be peace. The Gaza rulers have shown through the above article that the Palestinians do not want peace.Who is strong enough to tell the Obama administration and Israel that any negotiations with any Palestinians is just a waste of time. The rulers of Gaza who are Palestinians of course have no interest in signing a peace treaty. ..

(4)
david,
November 10, 2013 8:01 PM

prophecy coming true

Looks like Isaiah' s prophecies are coming to fruition - so we do know that Hamas will eventually get their punishment and the sooner the better

(3)
Thom McCann,
November 10, 2013 4:44 PM

Palestinians video of Nazi like training in Gaza

Watch "The video the Palestinians don't want you to see."

Their children match and make statements against Jews —not Israelis—as they prepare themselves for their jihad.

(2)
Jacob,
November 10, 2013 1:00 PM

Everyone should read this article.

Thank you. You've done a great service spreading this information. I hope it gets circulated around the world.

(1)
Andy,
November 10, 2013 12:53 PM

LOOK AT IT FROM HAMAS' VIEW

If the goal is to prepare young people to liberate their homeland and free the region from the "infidel" Zionist entity then it makes sense to "educate" kids accordingly. Otherwise, they may end up with a population willing to accept Israel as something other than a mistake brought about by European guilt over the holocaust. They may even view a two state solution in the region as permanent, which is anathema to Hamas and much of the Islamic world. That the rest of the world condones this seems to me a warning for Israel to rely on itself and of course Hashem as the world cares little if at all if the Jewish State survives.

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!